Taking your time and following these steps can ensure you have a successful business plan that actually works for you. There are some questions about your business you are going to need to answer first. Ask yourself why you are creating the business plan in the first place. Every business plan needs a purpose and a set of goals. When you know what purpose you are creating it for, you can be sure to meet those goals and needs in the plan itself.

Who are your major competitors?

How does your business compare to competitors? What do you have to offer that these other companies do not? You need to put yourself into the mind of the consumer and think about why they would want to use your company over another.

Take your business plan seriously

It can give you real insight into your business, the market and also your current knowledge of how successful you will be. Your business plan should actually be usable and workable and you should refer to it often, especially in the early stages of your business.

If you look at the business plans of some other successful companies then you might be motivated to do a better job on yours. It can show you examples of the steps to take to make a great business plan that gets results whether you are doing it to seek money from investors or lenders or just for your own business needs and goal setting.

Below are some steps to creating a great business plan that will work for you. Follow these as you are creating your plan and you will be more successful.

1. Put some time and thought into it.
2. Take your business plan seriously.
3. Do your research.
4. Investigate similar companies.
5. Take your time.

5 Steps To A Great Business Plan is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Search engine optimisation; however, takes time to achieve results. Some web marketers are not open to the idea of waiting for months to achieve the search engine ranking they are aiming for. This is the reason why some of them decide to take the shorter route to high search engine ranking. They do this by using black hat SEO techniques.

Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation Techniques

Some websites copy content from other websites. The search engines are always in the look out for quality content. But writing content can be so laborious and some web marketers dont want to go through this task. So instead of writing their own content, they just copy from other successful websites. This is a trick that triggers the red flag from the search engines. Oftentimes, it results to search engine penalty.

Another major factor that the search engines are looking for is keyword. A website that is highly optimised for a particular keyword will rank high on the search engines every time that keyword is searched for. Some web marketers want to get the short cut top ranking by using keywords excessively on the websites pages. The trick is using invisible keywords (they use the same colour for the keywords font and the pages background) so that the keywords will not be visible to the site visitors. Just like duplicate content, this trick is meant to do more harm than good to the website.

Search engine marketing resources never fail to mention about the importance of links. Truly, links play a crucial role in the online success of a website. A website with the most number of quality links ranks top on the search engine results.

Some web marketers participate in link farms or other link exchange programs to inflate their websites incoming links. The fact is that the search engines are not only after the quantity of the links, they are after quality as well. Links from low quality websites dont matter much. And worst, if the search engines found out about the linking trick, they will penalise the website.

Just like anything else, there is no shortcut way to online success. Top search engine ranking achieved through acceptable search engine optimisation strategies has long term benefits. Black hat SEO techniques will only give short term results and worst it can get a website banned on the search engines.

Black Hat SEO: Taking The Shorter Route To Online Success is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Step 1. Connect with the mentors that have a Dynamic Wealth Systems…people that have generated Millions of dollars in sales in their businesses, but more importantly, those that can give you a system that allows you to leverage their knowledge. With a Dynamic Wealth System you could literally be putting thousands of dollars into your bank account the very first month you put the system into ACTION!

Step 2. You must not make excuses…you must get started right now. To implement a Dynamic Wealth System, You must be decisive and take ACTION. You Must rid your self of all the negativity around you. From this very moment, you must EXPECT to be successful. You must have a Dynamic Wealth belief system for success. You must shift your belief system to one that always expects the very best in all areas of your life. Not hope for, but you expect the very best. Hoping is simply wishful thinking. When you expect things to happen in your life, and apply action, they will!

Step 3. You must apply “The Dynamic Wealth System Law of Attraction”…whatever you focus on expands in your life. What you think about consistently increases the strength of the attraction, and what you think about with strong emotion, increases the pull and power of the attraction.

Step 4. You must state your Dynamic Wealth System Goals in the ‘Positive’! Wrong Example: I want to be rich. Right Example: I want total financial abundance and prosperity for myself and my family! You must develop a vivid picture of what you want. Bring up that Dynamic Wealth System Image in your mind’s eye at least 2-3 times per day, then CHARGE it with positive emotion to magnetize it.

Step 5. Through your new found Dynamic Wealth System knowledge, you must develop an action plan for success. You must develop a “Stick to it…don’t quit…don’t stop attitude. You must stay focused…believe in the system, and stay the course. You must exert self-discipline, a bull dog tenacity and persistence. You must get off your duff and do something now! How bad do you want Success in your life? Once your Action plan is in place, all you do is Wash, rinse and repeat; and of course brace yourself for a lifetime journey of success!

5 Steps For A Dynamic Wealth System Online is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Cloaking and redirects are methods whereby you show one page to the search engine but a different one to the visitor. A redirect merely brings visitors to one page and then sends them to another page by refreshing the page with one on their site. Cloaking involves fooling a search engines indexer into thinking that it is something else and getting the indexer to send false information back to its boss.

Other techniques involve overloading metatags with keywords or even hiding keywords in plain site on the webpage. A variation on this technique is to shrink the keywords so that are too small to be seen by the naked eye.

Using unrelated keywords is another trick especially when combined with the above mentioned tricks. By using unrelated keywords in this manner you can drive traffic to your site from multiple sources.

Using an overly optimized landing page can also work. This is not the same thing as a legitimate landing page. In this case you use any and all methods to overly optimize a single and use that to lead people to your site. This would involve using all of the above methods for this one page.

The ultimate penalty for using the unscrupulous methods is banishment from the search engines themselves. Be careful when you employ these dark methods for fear of this punishment. Being penalized is one thing but to not even be on a search engine in the first place is your worst case scenario.

Black Hat SEO What Never To Do Or Get Banned is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

I shake my head in dismay. Click. Get into my trash where you belong.

The thing is I’ve been an internet business entrepreneur for years. I know how to separate the chaff from the wheat. Most newbies don’t and that’s worrying. That’s the point of this article – I want to share with you *exactly* how to analyse any and every niche market so that you can do your own research and never be tricked by another niche package that’s been developed by some greedy fly-by-night merchant that’s just cashing in on the PLR craze.

If you’re about to set-up a niche online business, for the first time or not, you must research the following very thoroughly before whipping out your credit card and buying the first niche package with private label rights that comes your way.

Here are some of the broad techniques that I use to analyse any potential niche that I’m considering entry into. If at least four of the five aren’t right, I’ll walk and move on to the next niche on my list.

(1) It All Starts With The Back-End & Existing Income Generating Opportunities – Do They Exist?

I’ve seen it all. Niche packages on internet marketing, pet grooming, how to make your own candles… the list goes on. With any potential niche you MUST start with the back-end opportunities that are available to you. By this I mean the additional income generation methods once you make the first eBook sale or after you get your prospect to the website. You’re not going to get rich on $29 book sales so you need to find some additional items that would interest your prospects. Here are some things you must look out for:

- Are There Big Ticket Products? Even if you convert a standard 1% of a $1,000 product (paying half of the sale value in commissions), you’re going to earn $500 from every 100 visitors to your site. Believe me, in some niche markets there are just no big ticket items (either because the niche isn’t big enough to support such a thing or the site infrastructure is not available as the niche operates largely in the old offline world).

- Multitude of products: I like niches that offer a multitude of different products. CD’s eBooks, DVDs, seminars, courses, software, membership sites. It means that there are lots of unique products to offer your prospects. In some niche markets there may be only one or two established packages for potential customers… they’ve seen it all before, may already have it and your chances of making that back end sale gets much tougher.

(2) Show Me The Numbers – OVERTURE!

There’s a debate with some online celebrities as to whether “numbers” matter – by that I mean the number of prospects in any given niche. I don’t want to perch on the fence. While I do think it’s possible to operate profitably in some smaller niche markets, I much prefer BIG ones. Niche industries that have a pool of prospects that number in the millions or even the billions. There’s just a certain comfort knowing that your niche enjoys that sort of demand and it increases your ability to create sub-products, put a spin on your products to target sub-niches and so on. That’s why I love niche markets such as investment & finance, real estate and travel – the numbers alone mean you have a fair chance of success.

(3) Cash Rich Prospects – Don’t Try To Sell A Porsche To A Beggar.

I don’t wish to sound insensitive with this but I’m here to try and help you make money – not win an award for humanitarian of the year. The simple fact is that if you want to make money, you need to sell to people who have money. That’s just basic common sense but you’d be surprised at the number of people who do not even consider this factor before jumping into a niche that has limited cash backing. Now combine a market that has MILLIONS of cash rich prospects and now you’re in a prosperous niche. People in such niches usually pay good money, often without too much thought. For example in the stock market and real estate niche market it’s common to spend $5,000 to attend a seminar and some real estate investors will splash out $300+ on the fly just to view a property that’s abroad (very common in the UK where cash rich investors jet off to Spain/Bulgaria/Portugal etc to inspect a potential buy). This is the sort of prospect you want to sell to.

(4) What Do Advertisers Pay To Advertise In Adsense/Overture? How Many Advertisers Are There?

I like contextual advertising – Google Adsense. Some people have been comically predicting the death of Adsense. Check Googles stock price and you’ll find that these people probably have IQ issues. See, in *their niche* (probably internet marketing) Adsense incomes may be on a short term downtrend so of course some set off into a magnificent panic while others sell hyped up reports to exploit the situation. Actually, Adsense in the internet marketing field isn’t all that great – the payouts to publishers can be low (though not always – I’ve had mixed results myself). In other markets it’s brilliant. In real estate returns of $5+ per click are not uncommon. In the investment niche it can be $8+. In these niches Adsense becomes your best friend – it also has an overwhelming ad stock inventory for popular niches and the ads are highly targeted – for example one of my niche sites reviews the Maldives as a luxury holiday destination including a page on each specific resort (eg Hilton). Thanks to Google Adsense, when a visitor comes to the Hilton review they are offered an ad that takes them to the Hilton resort (similar on many other resorts too). This is great for the advertiser, great for the publisher (me) and very convenient for the visitor. Everyone wins.

I divert somewhat – when you analyse a niche the point is that you should not only check that the bid values are high, but also that there are a fairly high number of advertisers (more competition means bigger bids means bigger commissions). In some small or unfancied niches there just aren’t enough advertisers. Why? Because the prospect base is either very small, has no money (or both).

(5) Pay Per Lead? We Love It…

I believe we’re going to see a lot more about Pay Per Leads in the near future. This is when you get paid for a particular action made by your visitor to the advertiser. Typically it means they fill out a short form, or download an eBook, or set up a free membership – the visitor doesn’t have to buy anything. Pay per lead can be very lucrative, particularly in industries such as real estate and foreclosures. I’ve seen some of these niches offering $5 to $20 per lead that you send them. Why? Because just one lead that goes on to buy a property or use their services can bring in several thousands or even hundreds of thousands for them in income. What’s $20 to get in that type of business?

Another big plus point about pay per lead is that once you know how to wield your own content with it the response rate can be explosive. For instance it’s quite easy to write an article on making money through foreclosures, and then prompting your prospects to take action by downloading a free eBook on foreclosures (for which you get paid $5 per download).

The above is the same basic blueprint I use to investigate my niches and I really urge you to do the same. Next time you see one of those junk PLR products trying to get you to pay money for content that has no potential or future you’ll be able to pick it out and trash it yourself.

Happy niche hunting!

5 Simple Steps To Find The Best Niche Markets Bursting With Profits is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

So what more specifically are the methods being employed by the two camps?

White hat methods:

These methods typically involve following the search engines’ published guidelines as to what is and what isn’t acceptable. The advice typically given by the white hat SEO experts is to create more user-friendly content, and not focus so much on the search engines. That is if your site is well put together and presents something users need it will naturally climb in the rankings. Also by making content that is easily accessible to the search engines spiders it will be properly read and therefore properly indexed in the search engines. The white hatters are needed most often because a webmaster has made critical mistakes in either the design or the set-up of their websites, inadvertently “poisoning” them so that they will not rank well. The SEOs then attempt to discover and correct these mistakes, which may include unreadable menus, broken links, temporary redirects, or simply a poor navigation structure.

Here are a few examples of SEO activities which the search engines find acceptable:

Using a reasonably-sized, accurate description meta tag without excessive use of keywords, exclamation marks or off topic terms.

Optimizing tags, titles and other parts of the code as necessary

Using WordTracker or a similar database to find popular and relevant keywords and phrases to use for your site.

Monitoring the various search engines to ensure that your URL gets indexed

Increasing the amount of unique content on the site.

Writing quality content for the website visitors instead of the search engines.

Black hat methods:

Whereas the white hat methods follow search engine guidelines “Black hat” SEO methods to try to improve rankings by any means necessary. Most of these methods are disapproved of by the search engines, typically because of their deceptive nature, but also hamper the ability of the search engines to provide quality content to site visitors. Search engines often penalize the sites they discover using black hat methods, by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from the search engine results altogether. These penalties are usually applied automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, because the Internet is too large to make manual policing of websites feasible. However once they are discovered, search engines may take action against those found to be using unethical SEO methods. Take for example Googles removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany in February 2006 for use of these practices.
One common black hat method is known as Spamdexing. Spamdexing is the promotion of irrelevant, chiefly commercial, pages through various deceptive techniques and the abuse of the search algorithms. Unfortunately it often gets confused with white hat search engine optimization techniques, which do not involve deceit. Spamming involves getting websites more exposure than they deserve for their keywords, leading to unsatisfactory search results. Optimization involves getting websites the rank they deserve on the most targeted keywords, leading to satisfactory search experiences.

One example of spamdexing is link farming. Link farming can be basically defined as any group of web pages that all link to every other page in the group. Another common practice is listing popular keywords in fine print or in the same color as the background so they cant be seen by users.

So how can you tell the difference between Black and White SEO practices?

A very easy way to distinguish between the two is though the amount of time involved in getting the desired results. White hat SEOs use methods that produce results slowly over time and only after a good deal of effort has been put into the site. Black hat SEOs offer you quick and easy results most, if not all, of which will obtained through deceptive practices.

Black & White – The Philosophies of SEO is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Myth 1: Multiple Domains

One SEO tactic involves etting up multiple domain names to bring more traffic to your business. This can be helpful, but often is not. Not only would this be expensive (yearly fees for domain name and maintenance) but would be very time consuming to maintain all the websites.

Myth 2: Search Engine Submission

Resubmitting your information every few weeks is not necessary, but could even reduce your priority ranking. Once your website is in the database of the search engines, there is no need to update your information.

Myth 3: Meta Tags

Another myth is that meta tags increase visitors. These might have been true five – ten years ago years ago, but current search engines do not place priority with the inclusion or absence of meta tags on a website. One important thing to remember is that the search engines do use the meta description tags when displaying your site in the SERPS. So while the meta tags may not affect your rankings, well written meta tags can increase the number of searchers who visit your site.

Myth 4: SEO Is Too Costly

Other myths include the value of SEO. They feel SEO experts are a costly, unnecessary expense. Marketing efforts are very costly. Direct mail, banner ads, radio or TV ad time, print advertisement, e-mails lists and trade fairs can all be more expense than SEO. Some companies believe an in house SEO effort can be as effective as an SEO company. This is a myth too, and SEO is a function that should be outsourced to ensure the company is aware of the latest trends. Traffic on you your website can be increased drastically by a SEO professional.

Myth 5: SEO Doesn’t Matter

The other major myth is that when people are looking for a specific company, they type in the website url. Since the exact name of the website is rarely known, many people (estimated at close to 90%) save time by using a search engine to quickly and easily locate a website. For example, even for major websites like http://Msn.com or http://Amazon.com, people use a search engine to locate the website instead of going directly to the site. SEO is important so that your business may be found on the search engines.

5 SEO Myths Debunked is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Better Business Option For Website is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

Off the top of my head I can think of 5 major reasons.

A blog is:

Easy to update
Easy to get started
Liked by the search engines
Creating feeds automatically
Allows people to interact with you

Before I start let me take just a minute to define the term blog. The following is quoted from Dr. Mani one of the earliest marketers to embrace blogs.

A blog is short for web log a sort of online personal diary where anyone can reveal his/her innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, ambitions, fears, hopes you get the meaning.

Yes, its a website. With one small difference. It lists posts ordered by date in a personal journal format, and is easier to create than a website just involves typing into a form and pushing the PUBLISH button

The ease of push button publishing of most blog platforms make them one of the easiest web sites to update. On most platforms you dont need to know HTML though it does help. If you can create a word document you can update a blog.

They are extremely easy to get started. Blogger and Word Press both can be started without much more than creating an account and clicking a few choices. Now there are huge advantages to hosting your blog on your own domain. But even there if you have cpanel hosting with Fantastico it is an almost fill in the blank process to get started. No great technical skills needed.

Search engines like blogs. They are usually updated regularly because it is easy. Compare the type and push a button to update of the average blog platform to creating an HTML page uploading it either through the cpanel or FTP. Much easier so it happens much more often. Blogs tend to have fresher content.

The search engines also like the RSS feeds that are created. Properly used feeds can allow you to generate links from other authoritative sites such as Technorati, Feedburner and others. These high PR sites create backlinks to your site which will make the search engines rate you higher. People can easily subscribe to your feed and know when you have updated your site through various RSS readers.

Finally, the biggest advantage is that blogs can be interactive. Most blog platforms allow your reader to comment on what you have written.

This does two very good things for you. You get additional updated content (which the search engines like) and you get feedback on what you have written. Which are you more likely to do? Click a comment link and leave your input on a blog or try and find a way to contact the average webmaster. Even if you do it is usually through a form or email that does not increase the content of the site.

A blog definitely gets my vote. What about you?

5 Reasons You Should Use A Blog is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com

The Internet was built upon links. Sites link to one another to guide users through relevant information. Since these links basically mean, theres relevant information on this site, each link pointing towards your site counts as a vote towards it. These votes help improve your natural ranking, especially when coupled with a well-built SEO friendly site. The big question is, of course, how do I go about getting other sites to link mine? Fortunately, the answer is an easy one, because there are many well run search engine friendly directories that would be more than happy to link to your site as part of their directory.

But the most popular directories receive thousands of applications to review. As such, they develop rules and guidelines for your submission. These rules are put in place to ensure that the submission and approval process can flow as smoothly as possible, as well as to help the directory select only the sites that are, in fact, relevant. And so the question returns: how do I ensure that my site gets accepted into the high-quality, top web directories?

It is very easy to adhere to the rules of a web directory with very little effort. In addition, because the editors of any directory are really looking for the same things, the rules from web directory to web directory tend to be very similar.

Count Those Characters:
One of the big rules imposed by directories has to do with the length of your title, description and keywords. If there were no limit, some people would write an essay for descriptions and cram in every possible keyword. Let me assure you that no directory editor wants to review a site application that could be broken up into chapters! Directories impose restrictions that essentially force you to be straight to the point. You might not be able to say everything about your site, so pick the most important points and go with that. Before you start submitting anywhere, sit back and write a few well-formulated descriptions that span 100, 150, 200, and 250 characters. One of those four levels will generally work in any web directory you come across. Once thats done, most of the hard work is out of the way. Now all you have to do is look for the character requirements, copy and paste your blurb of that length, and youre all set. The same thing holds true for keywords, so prepare a few different options so that, come submission time, its just a matter of picking the right one.

Would You Approve A Spam Filled Site Application?
Do not spam your directory listings. That cant be more clearly stated, yet for some reason, people still do it. You are never going to get listed in any human reviewed directory when you try this tactic. An example of this would be that if you sell widgets, when you submit your information you repeat the word widgets in your title, description, and keywords as many times as possible. Typically comprehension takes a back seat as the focus becomes cramming the word in as many times as possible. Directory editors hate this and its a very easy rejection. If you think that even attempting to spam like this is helpful, you might want to think again. If you spend time submitting to web directories with poorly articulated, spam-filled information, you are going to get rejected. Youve then wasted a lot of your time and gotten absolutely nothing in return.

Choose The Right Category:
Web directories are sorted by topic and editors typically take great pride in ensuring that everything stays well organized. A tiny little bit of effort on your part to choose the right category can vastly improve your chances of being listed without any delay. The reason is simply that if you are an editor and you want to approve a site, you probably only have to click one button. But, if that site chose the wrong category, then you need to edit the application to modify the category (and now the editor has to find the correct category in the hierarchy!), which takes more time. If you are the editor sitting there with thousands of applications to process, its much easier to click the reject button than it is to start fumbling through categories. So, put yourself in their shoes and do them a favor, because ultimately its you and your site that stand to benefit when you are approved.

A successful web directory submission campaign is when you maximize your time so that you get listed in the most directories possible. By following the above tips, you can help ensure you get approved, which goes a long way towards achieving your goal. With everything pre-written and good intentions to play by the rules, youll be flying through your submission campaign in no time.

Best Tips For Web Directory Submission Link Building Campaigns is a post from: Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Tutorials | Johnbriggsdesign.com